Red Hat ups its support for system integrators

Government policy change prompts vendor to set up global team to boost awareness of open source

Red Hat will help government-focused integrators to get to grips with open source

Red Hat is pumping resources into its system integrator (SI) community by building a dedicated team to help them boost business.

Phil Andrews, regional director for the UK and Ireland, said the firm had noticed a three-fold increase in its middleware pipeline as more firms became aware of open source as an alternative.

“Licence-based vendors are coming under pressure and changing their prices,” he said.

He said the government’s recent decision to increase open-source adoption in the public sector (Channelweb, 2 March 2009) played a major role in the vendor’s decision to invest in SIs.

“The government is frustrated with SI redevelopment of application stacks,” he said. “We are putting resources into government-focused SIs to help them have a better understanding of open source.”

He added that Red Hat is deepening its relationship with the channel.

“Over the past year we have seen a 10-point shift in business going towards the channel,” he said.

Greg Carlow, managing director of VAR Repton, said his firm has had a ‘ballistic’ year with Red Hat so far.

“Two things are fuelling growth ­ the ever-growing cost of the more traditional products and that Red Hat’s middleware is slicker,” he said.